I can’t lie, this was a weird week for Jujutsu Kaisen. Between the baseball, the comedy and the serious plot I had no idea what it was trying to accomplish. I don’t think Jujutsu Kaisen knows either to be frank. So without further ado lets dive in to the wacky world of cursed baseball.
As I said, this is tonally a very weird episode. Large portions of Jujutsu Kaisen were very comedy focused this week, and to great success I would say. Toudou getting hit in the face with a baseball and then the follow up gag of it being completely on purpose was hilarious. It was hands down the best joke not only of the episode but of the series as a whole. But interspersed between those jokes, between the baseball stat cards and fun scenes, we got… serious character flashbacks about abandonment? And philosophical talks between headmasters about whether or not Itadori should get to live? What? It felt like Jujutsu Kaisen didn’t have enough baseball content to fill a full episode with. That makes sense, no doubt the baseball was a single chapter in the manga. With an anime’s pacing though it makes for an awkward episode.
In a way it feels like this episode is filler. As if the author, Gege Akutami, didn’t know how to finish and transition out of this arc. Instead opting for something light and comedic rather than any kind of legitimate competition. This is a shame because while the baseball comedy is largely fine, with some moments of hilarity, I don’t think it really fits the series overall. This was an arc all about someone trying to kill Itadori and Itadori trying to reunite and reconnect with his friends and it never did much with either of those. Take Nobara/Fushiguro and Itadori’s scene eating pizza. Everything is completely normal, there’s no exploration of Itadori lying to them or questioning what he was up to. There was never any closure around his death. Instead its stereotypical shounen “You got stronger” bullshit and that’s really disappointing to me.
Speaking of disappointing, I also wasn’t a fan of the walkback Jujutsu Kaisen did with the Toudou/Itadori relationship. The whole idea of Itadori running away, of having not been in his “right mind”, sucks. Don’t back out of this brotherly bro relationship. Lean into it! Let them get along outside of combat. Let Toudou and Itadori joke and laugh and be loud together much to the annoyance of everyone else. Play up how he is the only one who can stand Toudou and doesn’t get why everyone else hates him. We get a bit of that at the end with the baseball hitting Toudou gag, but I’m not a fan of where this might lead in the future. Their friendship and interactions were the best scenes of this entire arc. Anything that walks those back or diminishes them isn’t going to go over well for me.
Finally lets talk about what is to come. We have 3 episodes of Jujutsu Kaisen left and based on both comments along with hints dropped in the episode, it looks like we get 1 more arc before the end, and looking at this episode we have two options for what it is. The first is the October 31st Shibuya incident. This probably isn’t happening because it sounds like the next “huge” arc, and twitter activity makes me think that’s still ongoing. The other, and far more likely option, is the Curse Womb Paintings. From the sounds of it there are 3 special grade curses in here. Enough for Fushiguro, Itadori and Nobara to each have their fight and close the season showing how much they have grown. Will that happen? No idea. But hopefully we can get some last hype fights before the season ends.
So all that said, how was this episode of Jujutsu Kaisen? Well as far as baseball episodes go I found it disappointing. It could have had a lot of fun with it, showing off curse techniques and really leaning into the baseball. And we did get some of that! Pitching machine Mechamaru was clever, and the little stat cards were cute. But I never felt invested in any of it. There was nothing important about winning the match and the whole thing was played for laughs. Maybe if the balance between comedy and serious plot was kept better it would be a more enjoyable experience. But because of the serious plot I was unable to fully immerse myself in the jokes and just left the episode wishing for next week.
What about you dear readers? Is there something I’m missing, something key to enjoying the episode? Or are you also waiting for plot and character development to happen? Let me know down below and I will see you next week!
I think you’re exaggerating the lack of direction and cohesion.
This episode resolves the previous arc, sets up future arcs, and gives the characters(and viewers) a break from the non-stop action.
There is a clear order and organic flow between the comedy and seriousness.
First half was serious story. You could tell because it was all about the villains killing people and their evil plan.
It’s explained the curses attacked to steal NINE(Hoo-boy) special grade objects.
They also wanted to test how long it would take Gojo to break their special anti-Gojo Veil.
(less than 30 minutes)
The villains have a very detailed plan with an exact date and location to take out Gojo because even the villains understand he breaks the story lol.
This is arc resolution and a lot of future arc set-up.
Second half was was cool-down comedy. (with some character development sprinkled in)
You mentioned this didn’t fit because this arc was about killing Itadori, but they were okay with killing him because they saw him as a human-shaped curse.
This second half wasn’t just for the kids to have fun, but also for the Kyoto students to get to see Yuji as a normal person.
Fighting off Hanami with Todo already gave them reason to respect him, as said by the Principal and Noritoshi.
But Noritoshi’s sad flashback not only got him to relate to Itadori (Mom/Grandpa says go save people so they’ll support you) but also functioned as a joke.
It’s because he was distracted by his sad flashback that he got 3 strikes without even swinging his bat.
It’s an organic flow between serious character development and comedy.
Even the Kyoto principal who ordered Yuji’s death is developed.
“Bending the rules of society for an individual is wrong. Gojo’s selfish. This is his fault.”
Then speak of the devil, Gojo laughingly appears to step on a bunch of ants and their “rules”. But the ants are all fine despite that. (ooooh the symbolism lol)
This was the last scene in the episode.
So yeah I think this episode had a clear structure with a good balance between comedy and seriousness
Serious first half-> Comedy second half-> end on Principals saying the students will have tough futures so let’s responsibly support them in the here and now.
Aside from that, you mentioned you were expecting more development on Yuji’s revival but we already went over everything in episode 14.
Nobara bullied him for lying to them, while Megumi was more concerned about his mental state and indirectly asked him about Junpei.
But after it was explained they both understood it was for his safety.
Lol I basically wrote my own review.
Fair enough. I might have had expectations from the arc that it simply had no intentions to fulfill.
I will say for episode 14 though that simply wasn’t enough on their part. A single scene or two about being annoyed that he lied to them simply isn’t good enough for me. Not when his death in episode 5 was played as a serious turning point for Megumi.
For the most reaction we get from him to be slight concern and immediate reacceptance isn’t what I would want or expect from a series that, until then, had been a rather dedicated exploration of death and grief.
Well to be fair Megumi got several flashbacks over the Goodwill arc including the one this episode when he repeated Yuji’s final words.
So you can tell it weighs on him.
He seems to see Yuji’s death as a personal failure to stay true to his belief(saving good people)
So his line about “getting strong enough to stay to true to my belief” while thinking about Yuji’s death makes sense.
Even when he says “I’ll surpass you” when you put it into context it sounds more like ->”I’ll get stronger than you so I’ll be able to save you because I believe you are a good person”
I do wonder if we even saw the same episode. Even the post-credits scene was sort of a gag in itself, where they intentionally recycled the post-credits scene of last episode (cats or dogs?) but changed the question to be more banal (bread or rice?) with Panda even commenting on it (and Yuji nodding with him)
Anime comedy very rarely hits for me. Odds are this episode was, by its very design, destined to not work for me. Because outside of a few gags like Mechamaru and Toudou the whole thing just felt like a waste of the viewers time and a questionable way to end an arc.
Mechamaru and the baseball hitting Toudou were great. Like, actual jokes instead of just zany antics.
That said, this show is a mess of plot gaps, time leaps, uncertain character motivations, unearned powerups and the director’s certainty that we’ll all just “get” what’s going on. Well, I don’t. Maybe it was made for the manga readers.